"First Contact" - The rape of Riker

You're saying it has treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross?

 

Lol exactly. Here's the scene. Reeling from the disastrous away mission on Rigel, Pike is thinking of leaving the service and says he might go into business "maybe on Regulus or on the Orion colony," and Boyce scoff's "you dealing in green animal women, slaves?" And Pike goes, that's only one option. I think those were Earth colonies and the Orion one was like Vegas or something, some zone where certain activities are permissible. They were only described as green animal women, and Boyce's delivery suggests being an Orion trader means being a trader from Orion (and everything that means), not a trader of Orions. The animal women could have been anything at that point. And if this is an Earth colony, can you imagine what grotesque aliens might be up to in their own eerie sectors of space? ...though for all we know, we were the outliers and they were all much more civilized.

 

SNW has brought a little of that back, thank goodness. Trek's safe, suburban universe has been such a fucking bore for decades.

As for Riker and Lanel, I suppose they both had a bit of a learning curve to get over - he couldn't have been much good with those Malcorian hands,, yet.

 

Back to this for a second.

I recently rewatched this episode after a long time and found that my perception of a particular scene changed (at least, from what I can recall). One reason why we post here is to share mutable perspectives; as an example, what we may have once found boring we now find stimulating. Similarly, something that we either didn't notice or didn't care about one way or the other the first time around now comes across as shocking. If you don't appreciate negative comments in general, fair enough, but to complain about critical commentary is just as helpful as complaining about praise or even neutral observations.

TNG is still my favorite Trek, but I'll continue to mention its shortcomings for as long as I discuss the show.

 

One thing that occurred to me after thinking about this scene is that in TNG, sexually aggressive women seemed more the rule than the exception…Besides Lanel, Ro Laren and Beata demanded sex with Riker. Manua Apgar tried to seduce him, Kamala kissed him intensely and was offering more, Brenna came on to him, even Soren initiated romance with him. Ardra wanted Picard to submit to her sexually. K’Ehleyr was the aggressor with Worf. Jenna started the quasi-romance with Data. Lwaxana was aggressive both with Picard and Timicin. Vash started the affair with Picard. Phillipa Louvis immediately reminded Picard of their relationship. Tasha Yar hustled Data into bed. The Edo women hug and kiss men at first sight.
Anyway, it seems this episode was part of a pattern…maybe a late 80’s trend for screenwriters.

 

That was an interesting episode. I doubt Riker behaved like a villain (that is, tried to force himself onto her and/or assault Nel Apgar), but it is possible that the truth lay somewhere in the middle.

Didn't she constantly (subconsciously?) adjust her behavior in order to satisfy the desires of the various male crewmembers?

 

That's your prerogative. I think it's silly to dissect old TV shows and judge them by the mores and values of the present, which can be quite different from the times in which the show was made. It's ultimately pointless. I didn't care about it then and I don't care about it now.

 

Good for you. Don't be surprised when people push back against inane potshots.

 

The values of any given decade in which Star Trek was made are reflected in the stories it told and the attitudes it espoused. By observing, quantifying and comparing those values with the ones we have today we can discern how far we have come and reflect upon who we were as a society.

What's pointless about that?

I find it very strange that you're basically saying that if an episode is old then any discussion is off the table? More than half a century on and people are still dissecting The Cage in this thread. It's the readings, re-readings, alternate perspectives and differing viewpoints that allow us to build enriching, multifaceted perspectives when regarding Star Trek.

@Ragitsu

Good thread. Carry on.

 

Don't be surprised when people push back against your pointless social justice windmill tilting, Don. You're doing fine work here.

 

As a student of history, I know how far we've come and how far we sadly still have to go. We are never going to attain a ST-like utopian society. Too many petty and silly things keep us from and will continue to keep us from coming together as a society. I certainly don't need some jamoke on a star trek board pulling up one example from a 30 year old episode to understand that.

 

I'm pretty sure the person who started the thread wouldn't appreciate being called a jamoke*. They have as much right to ask a question or raise a point as you.

If a thread doesn't interest you, move on. Or at least refrain from insults.

I still stand that you taking the position that discussing old episodes of Star Trek is pointless is in itself ridiculous, being posted as it was by yourself on a message board almost entirely devoted to discussing old episodes of Star Trek.

Discussing Star Trek, old and new is precisely the purpose of this board. I don't see anything different going on in this thread to what I see in countless others.

* Jamoke: an ordinary, unimpressive, or inept person.

 

If you don't like the topic/discussion you can decide to just not be part of it.

 

I don't have a dog, so I don't post in the "I Have A Dog Thread".

I'm thinking now I should pile in to their discussion and say "Who cares about dogs? I know all about dogs! Why are you talking about dogs? It's pointless!".

I wonder how many new friends I will make?

 

So why are you here? This entire board is dedicated to talking about TV series that are anywhere between 50 and 20 years old and only recently began talking about new productions.

Every aspect of TOS had been talked about and looked over by fandom and, yet, that board is still active. Should the mods just shut everything off and only allow active talk in the NuTrek forums?

Let people talk. Don't want to be part of the conversation? Leave.

 

If the original post had been about banning or editing the episode, or "cancelling it" in any way I'd agree with you. But as far as topics looking back at old eps with modern eyes go, this one is pretty mild.

 

It was the early nineties, still a time of problematic depictions of consent and non-consent. In the same year that this episode aired, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves played the Sheriff of Nottingham's forced marriage to and attempted rape of Maid Marian for laughs. In the case of a male character being coerced like in this episode, viewers of the time (and maybe many to this day) may have thought Riker should "man up," maybe going so far as thinking things like "Woooo, lucky Riker!" But with today's increased awareness of proper consent, the situation in the episode is more easily recognized as exploitative.

And there's nothing wrong with critiquing this type of thing, in both past and present media. There's a balance between dismissing something out of hand in kneejerk fashion and calling for it to be banned and whatnot; and just unquestioningly accepting the thing at face value and telling others to 'get over it.' A younger viewer attempting to approach older media without context may find many depictions to be downright horrifying, and react in the first manner while passing harsh judgment on both the product itself as well as the entire society of the time, 'throwing the baby out with the bathwater,' so to speak. Somewhere in between the two extremes, we can understand the social context that the movie or TV show, or book or song or whatever arose from in the first place, and recognize that certain aspects are not okay while still acknowledging the work's artistic merit and seeing what we can learn from it.

TCM does a good job of introducing classic movies in a way that contextualizes things that may be considered problematic today, and Leonard Maltin did something similar on DVDs of early Disney cartoons, and maybe some other movies that I can't remember at the moment.

If roles had been reversed and Data was a female-presenting android being held captive in physical restraints by a Borg "King" creepily asking her, "Are you familiar with physical forms of pleasure?," it might have raised more eyebrows. It also would have been a throwback to cheap pulp space opera from earlier decades.

Kor

 

Well, the Borg Queen-Data interactions are more clearly coercive and less (attempting to be) comedic as well.

 

Yeah, not so much. If someone who's troubled by a work wants to seek some further context in hope of understanding it better, that's swell. But it's not the function of the artist to meet them where they are. It can't be - over time, the original context of all art is lost and only the creation remains, if it does remain. Ultimately, people will find whatever values they find in it.